Demands for high-resolution, high-quality images such as High Definition (HD) images and Ultra High Definition (UHD) images have recently increased in various fields of applications. As video data has a higher resolution and higher quality, the video data is larger in amount than traditional video data. Therefore, if video data is transmitted on an existing medium such as a wired/wireless wideband circuit or stored in an existing storage medium, transmission cost and storage cost increase. To avert these problems encountered with higher-resolution, higher-quality video data, high-efficiency video compression techniques may be used.
There are a variety of video compression techniques including inter-picture prediction in which pixel values included in a current picture are predicted from a picture previous to or following the current picture, intra-picture prediction in which pixel values included in a current picture are predicted using pixel information in the current picture, and entropy encoding in which a short code is assigned to a more frequent value and a long code is assigned to a less frequent value. Video data may be compressed effectively and transmitted or stored, using such a video compression technique.
Along with the increasing demands for high-resolution videos, demands for three-dimensional (3D) video content as a new video service have been increasing. A video compression technique for effectively providing HD and UHD 3D video content is under discussion.